Pierre Kast
Pierre Kast was a notable French filmmaker, writer, and member of the French resistance born in Paris on September 22, 1920. Educated at the Sorbonne, he became involved in the resistance during World War II, and post-war, he co-founded the Club of the Savanturiers, a group of science fiction enthusiasts inspired by American culture. His career in cinema began with a position at the Cinematheque Française and as an assistant director for Jean Germillon. Kast is often associated with the Nouvelle Vague movement in French cinema, emphasizing the director's role as the auteur and the significance of mise-en-scène in film. Among his works are several films, including "Le Bel Âge" and "Les Soleils de l'Île de Pâques," as well as his influential novel "Les Vampires de l'Alfama," which explores themes of political and sexual liberation through a vampire allegory. Kast's contributions have been recognized posthumously, with a screenplay prize at the Valencia film festival bearing his name. He passed away on October 20, 1984.
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Pierre Kast
Film Director
- Born: September 22, 1920
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Died: October 20, 1984
- Place of death: Paris, France
Biography
Pierre Kast was born in Paris, France, on September 22, 1920. He was educated at the Sorbonne. When Germany invaded France in World War II, he became a member of the French resistance movement. After the war, along with friends Boris Vian and Raymond Queneau and others, he founded the Club of the Savanturiers (a combination term made up of the words for “sage” and “adventurer”), a group of French science-fiction fans who looked to America for a cultural model.
In 1945, he received a position with the Cinematheque Française, and became an assistant director for French film director Jean Germillon, working on Les Charmes de l’Existence (the charms of life) in 1949. Soon Kast began directing his own short films, and in 1957 directed his first feature-length film. Kast is often grouped with other French directors as part of the Nouvelle Vague, the new wave. Like many of them, he wrote film criticism and theory for the French film journal Cahiers du cinéma. His most important critical position was his stressing of a film’s mise-en-scène (the totality of the composition of a shot, including actors, framing, lighting, set design, props—the sum of its visual component) as being the particular property of the film’s director as the auteur (author) of a film.
Kast’s other films include Le Bel Âge (Love Is When You Make It, 1959), Vacances portugaises (Portugese Vacation, 1963), and Les Soleils de l’Île de Pâques (The Suns of Easter Island, 1972). His most important novel is Les Vampires de l’Alfama (the vampires of Alfama, 1975), a historical horror novel set in eighteenth century Portugal. The novel’s protagonist, João, prime minister of Portugal, is fighting the forces of tyranny and reaction and allies himself with Count Kotor, a vampire fleeing from persecution in Central Europe. The vampires here are symbols of freedom from political and religious oppression, as well as of sexual liberation. Although the forces of liberation do not triumph, they do live on, as vampires often do, to wage their battle another day.
Kast died on October 20, 1984. A prize awarded at the Valencia, Spain, film festival for best screenplay is named after him. His most famous novel, like Anne Rice’s almost contemporaneous Interview with the Vampire (1976), marked a resurgence of the vampire-as-hero in horror fiction; in Kast’s version, the vampire is a Shelleyean Prometheus-like figure, promising through the promise of immortality to free humanity from the fetters in which politics and religion have bound it.